NaNoWriMo Teaser

I had almost decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year. Not because I had a bad experience or anything, but because I'm so weary. I'm tired of fighting for every scrap of creative time and energy. I've accomplished such big creative things in the past year and a half or so, but I still feel disconnected from the act of creating. I don't get to sit and enjoy it for hours on end like I used to. I have to sneak it in behind closed doors and on work breaks, only seconds at a time, maybe ten minutes if I'm lucky. I don't get to lean into it and really explore the way I used to. And I guess to me, that was the part I liked most. Finishing projects is great and all, but I loved the process of sitting down and just disappearing into another world for hours and then emerging with something tangible.

Somewhere along the line I decided to leverage that weariness.

So I'm writing essentially an autobiography set in a video game world. All the bosses are the people and situations that broke me.

Of course, I have no idea how it ends, since I'm still in the middle of three boss battles simultaneously.

National Novel Writing Month 2022 Teaser

Yes, dear readers, it is that time of year again. National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) is only six days away.

This year's idea came to me backstage during the one and only theatre production I did this year. I was literally in the wings waiting for my cue when suddenly the main character's name, the world, the setting, and the plotline all popped into my head fully formed. I've been doing this long enough to know this was it. I went onstage, did my scene, and then came backstage and wrote down as much as I could in my journal before my next entrance.

And then, like I usually do, I ignored it for the next four months. (Otherwise I'll write it and have nothing for NaNoWriMo.)

I am really excited about this one. I knew before I even got this idea that I wanted to do a science fiction story, but I could never have manufactured this one by brainstorming. Sometimes brainstorming works, but more often I find my best ideas are just 'given' to me and all I have to do is write them down. Those are the moments that make all the mockery and ridicule for pursuing this craft worth it.

This idea took my recently-developed love of modern-day parables and mixed it perfectly with the outer space setting I wanted -- so perfectly that this book literally could not work set anywhere else. The whole plot hinges on this setting. And it fits right in with all my rants about Evangelicals. I have not been this excited for NaNoWriMo in literally almost a decade.

It all starts next Tuesday.

If you want to write your own, check out nanowrimo.org for details and to sign up. It's 50,000 words in 30 days (or 1,667 words per day), and not one word needs to be 'handed in' or 'graded.'  Nobody will see it unless you want them to. This is purely writing for the sake of writing. No pressure (other than the 30-day deadline).

Music Day

More from the essential trio of Christmas albums!

Yes, this means more Michael W. Smith. (Next week will be something different, I promise.)

However...

To break the 'monotony' of Christmas music, I have decided to feature a second song today. That's right, the first ever two-for-one Music Day.

First things first: Christmas music.

This is like the updated, more 'modern' version of his 1998 song Christmastime.  Personally I prefer Christmastime, but how can you frown at the big orchestra sound and a two choirs?

Title: Christmas Angels
Artist: Michael W. Smith
Album: It's A Wonderful Christmas
Year: 2007
Label: Reunion Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

Having been listening to Classic Christian 24/7 for nearly a month now, I've discovered the titles of many songs I remembered from my childhood but wouldn't have known where to start looking for them because I had absolutely nothing to go on. But now -- oh happiness! -- I can look them up and download them and with a touch of a screen relive the days of the old green Spirit when my best friend still lived in the country.

This is one of those songs.

Title: Wild Imagination
Artist: Scott Krippayne
Album: Wild Imagination
Year: 1995
Label: Word Records
iTunes here, but it's not on YouTube...

Less than a week after I first heard it on the station, the first time I'd heard it in... I don't even know, ten years? -- I'd downloaded it from iTunes. I listened to it exactly once on my iPod before waking up the other morning with choreography in my head for nearly the entire chorus, plus a fully formed costume idea.

That's still making me smile as I write this.

Come and see
Come and be surprised...

Unstuck! (Or The Novel, Day Sixteen)

I've finally figured it out!
After sixteen days of fighting and just barely staying only one day behind my word count, a whole new vein has opened up. I can't wait to start it (don't worry, I've written it down so I won't forget).
The problem here was that I wanted to focus almost exclusively on Rudy, but since he's stuck in his circumstances there isn't much for him to do. To get through Week Two, I simply got his friends high and had them play a four-person game of Mafia (one of players on the phone).
If you're not familiar with Mafia, it's kind of a role-playing game where you kill each other off in your imaginary little town, but it requires a group of at least eight to work well. Also, the killing is done by pointing and nonverbal signals while everyone else's eyes are closed -- having one of the players on the phone lets everyone know who's being killed by whom, meaning your game pretty much lasts one round instead of a dozen or so.

Anyway, I've discovered that while Rudy is the pivotal character -- all the action in the book is as a direct result of who he was and what happened to him -- the book is more about Preston than anyone else (at least right now).
I knew Clayton and Preston's reactions would be a big part of the book but I can't let Clayton recover too easily (after all, he was Rudy's best friend) and I was planning on Preston being the rock through the whole situation. My problem though was that I was trying to keep Preston too neutral about the whole thing... a little shocked maybe, but not much more than that.
But something like this would rock his world. It would take his faith and turn it on its head. It would bring him to question everything he's strived for.

So as of today I'm introducing a new character -- Preston's friend Jon. I think Jon is going to be more of the 'rock' character than Preston, since he's fairly removed from the whole situation... his only connection is Preston, who himself wasn't directly involved. (Also, Jon's a Lecrae fan... music in the story tends to help it along, I've found.)

My statistics so far (note that I haven't written anything today yet):
Goal for Day Sixteen: 25,806
Word count so far: 24,007
I'm not out of this contest yet!

The Desert

I loathe more than anything the feeling of not having an idea for something.
Whether writing, photography, dance... I've always had an idea for something at almost any given moment. My problem as an artist never used to be getting an idea, it was keeping up with the overabundance of ideas. In approximately twelve years of artist-like endeavours, I have never once run dry for more than maybe a week. Even then I'm usually working off such a backlog of previous ideas that I barely notice.
There's always something -- real life presents so many 'plot' twists and characters for writing, so many beautiful scenes and intricate detail for your camera to capture, so many movements for the human body to mimic. How can one possibly run out of ideas?
I have been reduced to counting. Counting out music 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4... Wanting to be able to say I've accomplished something that brings me closer to my dream of dance but in reality I'm just putting it off in a more sneaky way.
I need a bigger practice space. I need to move out because my family screams at each other at the slightest provocation if any at all and it screws up my concentration. I need to learn the real names of the steps so I can write it down more accurately. I need this, I need that...
No -- what I need is to get off my lazy backside, shove the headphones in, and dance. Breaking it down can come later. Dance the same steps over and over again, memorise it -- then attempt to write it down. Scream along to the White Heart or Flyleaf if need be but dance.
I have this chance wide open in front of me. Ability, training, some talent (I hope) -- all right here for the taking. I've been incredibly blessed in almost every way you could ask for a career in dance.
But I won't have it forever. There is no guarantee -- the human body is fragile. I know I have to do as much of it as I can before something happens that might disable me, but apparently the 'action' side of my brain hasn't figured that out. It's figured out (much to my decidedly not-artist family's consternation) that I'm not going to do anything else with my life, but it appears to have a problem with if you're not doing anything else, then actually get up and do the one thing you have decided you will. Seriously, have I really become this lazy?
I've already come to the conclusion that I'm going to set aside some time every day to work on choreography. At first I thought maybe fifteen minutes would be sufficient, but after putting that into practice I've discovered that the resulting fragmentation of the thought process means I would be better off not bothering. I really should know by now there's no way to get a quality result if you only work on something in fifteen-minute bursts.
So I'm going to look at my schedule and see if I can't pull together an hour every day, at least. It's going to be difficult here in August with the novel, but really, if I have time to write a novel, I have an extra hour somewhere that doesn't require Facebook in it.
So if I start posting rants about Facebook, it means I'm on Facebook instead of dancing and for that I hereby give you full permission to scold me. Facebook will always be there but my body will not always be young.